


The Sticking-Place

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Ableism, F/M, Non-graphic depictions of childbirth, POV Female Character, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 21:28:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11655093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Tywin dies, Joanna grieves.Cersei triumphs, Joanna glories.





	1. Grief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tywinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/gifts).



> _MACBETH_  
>        _If we should fail?_  
>  _LADY MACBETH_  
>        _We fail?_  
>  _But screw your courage to the sticking-place,_  
>  _And we’ll not fail._
> 
> For Lauren.

**I.**

 

Were it any but Creylen telling her, Joanna would dismiss these terrible words out of hand.

But Creylen was standing before her, head bowed, hands folded within his vast grey sleeves, and he had never lied to her before. He was as good a man as a maester could be, and loyal to whoever held Casterly Rock with a determination that she admired - Tywin had been as loyal to her from the day of their marriage, after all, and there was little about her husband that she did not admire.

Little about him that she  _ had not  _ admired. How alien, to think that he would not visit her this evening after dinner, that he would not come to her with joy over Jaime’s budding prowess with a blade and frustration with Cersei’s obvious stubbornness. How absolutely peculiar that she would never again roll over upon waking to find his fierce face relaxed in sleep, softened as it never was elsewhere.

“Did he suffer?”

Part of her hoped that he had, because suffering would mean that he had fought the plague to the end - that he had fought to return to her, hale and well. An easy death would be weakness, would mean that he had given in against an enemy who could have been defeated had he only chosen to struggle.

“Very much, my lady,” Creylen admitted. “Lord Tywin was not a man who was ever going to die a quiet death.”

She nodded, pleased despite the yawning emptiness hollowing her belly out around the babe that weighed against her spine so heavily. He had died a good death, if an unremarkable one. Good.

“Thank you for your service during this time, maester,” she said, nodding her dismissal. “Please maintain the quarantine, if you will, until the threat to the children has passed.”

“Of course, my lady,” he said, offering a perfunctory bow and backing toward the door. “Shall I tell them-”

“No,” she said, sharper than was appropriate, given Creylen’s service. “I will tell them myself, maester. Thank you.”

He nodded, accepting the dismissal, and was gone. Joanna leaned back in her chair, against the hot bricks her women had wrapped in heavy linen and set behind her to sooth the aches in her back.

Tywin, dead.

Jaime, Lord Lannister.

Cersei, doubtless furious.

What was Joanna herself? The babe in her belly tumbled, restless as the itch under her skin, and she sighed.

It was too soon to decide such things. For now, there was only Tywin’s absence and Jaime’s ascension - all else could wait, at least until Genna arrived.

No, all else could not wait. The children had to be told, and then the household, although she supposed she could delegate responsibility for the cooks and maids to Maester Creylen, or to Genna, when she arrived from the Twins. The children were Joanna’s alone, now, and so it fell to her to share the news with them.

She rose, struggling against the aches and the contrary weight of the babe, and steadied herself before trying to move. She leaned into the phantom of Tywin’s bracing arm without thinking, forgetting for a moment that he was not beside her, that he would never again be beside her, and sighed.

Perhaps she could allow herself a moment. Just that much.

The grief rose up like a storm-borne wave against the rocks below the Rock, swelling through her stomach and chest before crashing through her mouth. She tried to catch it, to cage it behind clenched teeth and curled lips, but it was too much.

Tywin deserved this much, surely? This show of fury, of  _ rage,  _ even if she never let another hear this particular roar?

She cried for a score of heartbeats, not allowing herself anything more than that, and straightened her spine as best she could against the babe. Her eyes, when she looked in the golden mirror by the door, were wet, but not red, and that would have to do.

The twins’ bedchambers were far enough away that she risked encountering some servant or other on her way to them, and it would not have done to show any weakness before such creatures. She never had before now, and Tywin’s death could not be allowed to change such habits.

Cersei bounded to her feet as soon as the door opened, eager for some break from the monotony of their confinement to their rooms - perhaps she thought Joanna was Gerion, come to play some game, or even Kevan, who sometimes came and sat with them, for want of anything more useful to do. Tywin’s brothers had soft hearts, as soft as his was fierce, and Joanna wished to any god, not just the silent Seven who haunted the sept in the deep reaches of the Rock, that any of the three would grow some steel in his spine - she would have need of them, before Jaime reached his majority, loathe though she was to admit it.

It was not as though she could count on Stafford, she knew. Her own brother was softer than any of Tywin’s, who at least had the lingering shame of their father’s last days to harden them against folly.

“Is there some news, Mother?” Cersei asked, dropping into an exquisite curtsy before Jaime had even come into the room - this would hurt her more than him, Joanna knew, for while Jaime loved and admired his father, Cersei was the one who treasured Tywin’s every glance, who hoarded his praise and acknowledgement like lesser folk might hoard jewels. “Is Father well now?”

“Oh, my little lion cubs,” Joanna sighed, brushing her fingers over Cersei’s golden head on her way to the chair by the fire, in this study-turned-playroom, a rare show of sentiment or gentleness from Tywin. He had ordered rooms repurposed from his sickbed, and this room in particular had been a boon greater than she could have imagined, these past days. Without somewhere to confine the twins while she kept the Rock and managed the quarantine in the lower levels from afar, she would surely have gone mad.

Tywin would smile, if he could see her own show of sentiment, the gentleness of her hand on Cersei’s soft hair, under Jaime’s sharp chin.

She sighed again, sitting down, and the twins settled on their knees by her feet, touching the spread of her skirts but not her knees. “Would that it were so,” she sighed, and told them.

 

* * *

Cersei’s roars were to be shared with the whole world, it seemed, for the Rock echoed with them for days - howling sobs heaving forth in a show of desperate anger that Joanna envied so much that she could not bring herself to force Cersei quiet.

Jaime seemed more terrified than bereaved, which irked Joanna. He had known that the Rock would be his inheritance all his life, and while this was earlier than any of them could have anticipated his coming into that inheritance, it was not wholly unexpected.

“Oh, Tywin,” Joanna sighed, closing the jewel casket which held his rings and brooches, which would be locked into the cabinet with his armour, to be held safe, until Jaime was old enough and tall enough to wear it. “They are still so much in need of moulding.”

  
  


**II.**

  
  


Genna arrived without any particular fanfare, and Joanna itched at the the feel of Genna’s eyes on the back of her neck, watching for weakness, or for something else. Genna was not so subtle as Tywin had been, but she was better at concealment than her other brothers, and Joanna sometimes wondered what precisely Genna watched  _ for. _

“Welcome, little sister,” Kevan said, somewhere behind her, and Genna offered some reply. Joanna ignored whatever nonsense they spoke between themselves - such meaningless things as she shared with Stafford, she supposed, the sort of boring things one shared with one’s brothers - and stirred only when the rustle of Genna’s skirts settled to silence beside her, when Genna’s small, plump hand settled into the curve of Joanna’s long, thin fingers.

“You look wretched,” Genna said, as quietly as she was able, and Joanna found herself smiling.

“You look fat,” she returned, and Genna squeezed her fingers.

 

* * *

The babe tumbled restlessly whenever Joanna lay on her back, or on her sides, or even close to flat.

Her only chance of sleep was to half-sit, propped against pillows. Her neck ached constantly for the awkwardness of it, and Tywin had always been so good at rubbing away the pain. He had usually done it after their morning meal, while they read whatever correspondence had arrived overnight, and after the midday meal, too, if necessary.

Achingly awake, she reached over and pressed her hand to the cold spread of undisturbed sheets on the other side of the bed. She had spent many nights alone here, while Tywin was at King’s Landing, serving under Aerys’ yoke, but any loneliness suffered then was nothing compared to the yawning quiet that stretched out ahead of her now.

“Jaime is not a fit replacement for you, my love,” she told the space where Tywin ought to have been. “But he is a suitable shield, one I shall use to wield your power.”

She settled as comfortably as she could, hand still pressed to the cold where once Tywin’s heart had beat, and sighed.

“Jaime is not a fit replacement,” she said, “but I am.”

 

**III.**

 

“I don’t  _ want _  to have more companions,” Cersei fumed, stomping up and down the fine carpet of her bedchamber like a cowherd. Joanna’s back was aching, her whole  _ body  _ was aching, and she had neared the very end of her patience with Cersei’s whining.

“I do not care what you want,” she said sharply. “With your father dead, we must show strength, and a simple means of doing so is to take  _ hostages.  _ So you will have more companions than the Farman girl and the little Hetherspoon twit, and you will become their friend, whether or not you  _ want  _ to.”

Cersei’s face, already twisted in fury, turned the alarming red that heralded a true tantrum - before, Joanna would have been satisfied to allow Jaime to calm his sister, but now the very idea of them touching made her skin crawl.

So instead, she took it upon herself to nip Cersei’s temper in the bud.

“Screaming will not get you what you want, little lion,” Joanna said, pitching herself stern rather than sharp. “No man will listen to a woman gone hysterical, but a woman who presents herself charmingly, who has friends who can pledge to her sensible, biddable nature? She is a woman who will get her way.”

“I  _ do not want-” _

“But you will have, regardless,” Joanna said, pressing her fingers over Cersei’s open mouth. “Just as I did not want to waste my childhood at simpering little Rhaella’s side, but I did. Just as your father never wanted to bow in obedience to the fool who sits the throne, but  _ he did. _  Do you think yourself greater than your father, or than me?”

Jaime’s knock on the door was as timely as it was unwanted, for surely Cersei would use her brother’s support to stage a damned mutiny!

“To your room, Jaime,” Joanna said, before Cersei could spill the tears sprouting in her eyes - already she had learned to summon them at will, and already Joanna despaired of the talent. “I will speak with you when I am done with your sister.”

“But Mother-”

“Your room, Jaime! Now!”

He went, head bowed and mouth pouting, and Cersei’s tears abated in a fresh wave of fury.

“I don’t  _ want-” _

“And I have told you already, my girl,” Joanna said, “I don’t care.”

 

* * *

 

Joanna could stand just long enough to welcome her little cousin to the Rock, pretty Emelyn Prester, with eyes the same gimlet-bright as Joanna’s mother’s - although Lady Marla would never have giggled so girlishly had she had a chance to be presented to the Red Widow, of that Joanna was certain.

Would they call her the Golden Widow now, a remembrance of her grandmother and of Tywin both? Some silly, sentimental part of her hoped so, if only to tie herself and Tywin ever closer together.

Emelyn was the last of the three girls she had selected for Cersei’s household to arrive, which annoyed her more than she could afford to express. She would need all her bannermen behind her now, while her hold was still so tenuous - already, there had been whispers that it ought to be staid, foolish Kevan who held power until Jaime came of age - and so she greeted Emelyn with smiles and sweetness, and held tight to Cersei’s shoulder until Cersei did the same.

Lorna Lydden was a biddable little thing, with that long, handsome face and terrible, tufty hair like her father, the same father who so adored her that he would surely support Joanna for the honour Joanna was showing his daughter. Lewys Lydden was a man of no great imagination, in Joanna’s experience, but Deep Den was useful, and the lords of the West listened to someone solid and dependable, like Lord Lydden.

The other girl, sharp-nosed Bethany Marbrand, was the one Joanna liked best of the three, just as she liked the girl’s brother best of Jaime’s companions. House Marbrand were precisely the kind of allies she needed most, if only because Lord Damon had always shown her the respect that was her due when she ruled the Westerlands in Tywin’s absences - the same could not be said for many others, and they were the true danger.

“Come, Emelyn,” Joanna said, gesturing for the girl to follow her as she turned, painfully slowly, and faced for the stairs. “Cersei will show you to your rooms, and then she will bring you to meet the other ladies with whom you will be living while you are here at the Rock.”

Cersei’s face was flushed with the beginnings of a tantrum, but Joanna ignored that - either the girl would learn to control herself, or she would fail.

Joanna had no room for failure. If Cersei was not up to the task, Joanna would have to find some other way to achieve one of the dearest of Tywin’s dreams - would a great-grandson sitting the throne quiet his ghost as readily as a grandson, she wondered?

Unless Cersei improved in a great many ways, it would have to do.

“Come on, then,” Cersei said, jerking her head toward the stairs. “This way.”

Joanna watched them go, and once alone, pressed her hand over her mouth as another wave of nausea slid up her throat - she had not been so sick late on with the twins, but Creylen assured her that every pregnancy was different, and that the sickness indicated that the babe was active, which meant it was healthy, like as not.

Joanna did not know how she could love a child born under the shadow of Tywin’s loss, when her heart was trapped wholly in the sarcophagus alongside the only man who’d ever been worthy of her, but if it this second son was half the man of his father, she would find a way. Tywin’s children deserved only the best she had to give them, after all.

 

* * *

Jaime returned to Crakehall the morning after Emelyn Prester’s arrival, and Joanna’s nausea abated a little - with him out of the castle, there was no risk of…  _ That. _

 

**IV.**

 

Cersei  _ did  _ improve a little, and Joanna saw Genna’s hand in that.

“She is much more compliant if you coax that ego of hers,” Genna said, running a heavy gold-handled comb through Joanna’s hair. Her stupid maids had tugged and pulled at her hair so roughly that she had sent them away, but Genna’s hands were always careful. They had often combed one another’s hair, when they were girls here at the Rock together, before Joanna left to sit at milksop Rhaella’s feet.

Of everyone, she had missed Genna the most - which was not to say she had missed Genna much, not when there was court to be discovered and uncovered, not when there had been Tywin to tease and drive mad, not when there was  _ control  _ to be had, such as had been denied her under her father’s rule - and was glad that they had this time together now.

It would be good for her to have a lady companion she could trust. Was that not what she wanted for Cersei, after all?

“Her ego needs no coaxing or stroking, sister,” Joanna said firmly, tipping her head forward to make it easier for Genna to reach the ends of her hair. “She is quite vain enough as it is-”

“But are you not vainer than she, sister?” Genna said, easy and light, daring more than any other woman ever would in Joanna’s company. “Rightly so, I admit, but that makes no difference. Why does your vanity weigh differently than Cersei’s?”

Was she a vain woman? Like as not, she was, but she saw no harm in having pride in her beauty, since she  _ was  _ beautiful - more obviously beautiful than Loreza had been even in the flower of her youth, and simply lovelier than everyone else she knew.

Besides - her face was not her greatest asset, no more than her beautiful breasts or her pale, long-fingered hands or her long, slim legs.

Her greatest asset was the envy of every man and woman in Westeros.

“It is different,” Joanna said, “because she is vain only of her face - of herself. I have long been vain of something other than my own beauty, Genna.”

Genna’s hands, so much smaller than Joanna’s own, laid down the hair brush and settled on Joanna’s shoulders.

“He is gone now, Joanna,” Genna said, all mirth gone from her fine face. Genna, Joanna had once thought, looked like Tywin made a woman, but she saw now that it was not true - there was a softness in Genna that Tywin would have scorned, had he known of it, and Genna’s taste for excess was showing in her full cheeks and the hint of a second chin under her firm jaw. “There is only us, now.”

“And are we not enough?” Joanna returned. “Are we not worthy of a little vanity?”

Genna smiled, mirth returned, and Joanna settled once more.

“Tell me, then,” she said, “how you tamed my wildest little cub.”

 

* * *

Creylen ordered her on bedrest when she went to her knees in the great hall for the pains in her belly, and already she could see control slipping from her grip - the clerks did not wish to worry the lady in her confinement, Genna told her.

Some part of her, that same foolish, sentimental part that slept best with her hand pressed to Tywin’s empty place in their bed, that wished for an epitaph that recalled her husband and the grandmother she never knew alike, that wanted so  _ badly  _ for Cersei to find a friend as true as Loreza Martell had always been to Joanna, that part of her was glad that they were leaving her be. Few things had ever frightened her as much as that false labour, leaving her half-sick with terror that she was to lose this part of Tywin, too, before she even had a chance to puzzle out which pieces of her husband have survived in the babe.

Kevan, of course, took upon himself the brunt of the duties that were Joanna’s by right, as Jaime’s regent, and she was half-sick over that, too, but with rage, not terror. Genna spied and collected information for her, as did Cersei, proving surprisingly canny, surprisingly subtle, but it was not enough - Kevan kept Genna away, and Cersei’s concerns were so painfully _narrow._

“Emelyn says that I shall marry some oaf, a Crakehall or some such,” Cersei groused, flouncing into Joanna’s bedchamber and throwing herself inelegantly into the chair by the bed. “I shan’t marry  _ any  _ such oaf, shall I? I should rather someone more… More…”

“More princely, mayhaps?” Joanna suggested, not looking away from her embroidery hoop. There was no need, for she could see Cersei well enough from the corner of her eye, and could guess how her daughter would react to such a suggestion even without seeing.

Or, perhaps not. She was surprised by how Cersei stilled, going quiet and thoughtful in a way alien to everything Joanna knew of the girl.

It reminded her of herself, of how she had reacted to Loreza teasing her about Tywin’s obvious affection for her, when they had all been younger and more foolish.  _ Oh, Tywin. _

“Father once told me I would be Queen,” Cersei said, slowly and carefully, and Joanna could not help but be pleased by this new development. “I should like to be Queen, Mother.”

“I imagine you would, little cub,” Joanna said, watching Cersei’s face - as beautiful as her own, as beautiful as Tywin’s - light with joy. “And soon, I will see that it happens.”

 

**V.**

 

Her pains began early, and late in the night.

She could tell immediately that this birth would not be as the last, that this child would not slip from her body as the twins had, slimy and calm, Jaime already clutching at Cersei.

She ought to have known right from then that there was something amiss.

This babe fought, though, fierce and strong in a way that might have made her laugh, had it not  _ hurt  _ so much. Genna was with her, of course, and the septa fumbling with her prayer beads, and her lady’s maids mopping her brow and changing the linens spread beneath her as Creylen commanded.

She wished for Tywin, standing outside the door. She wished for him sitting down the hall in his solar, or racing back to the Rock from King’s Landing. She wished for him alive. She wished for him  _ with her,  _ in this moment and in all other moments, and the ache in her heart almost - but not quite - overshadowed the ache in her cunt.

“I want the little bastard  _ out,  _ Genna,” she growled, using her grip on Genna and on Kevan’s silly little wife to push herself up, so she could bear down harder against the crushing pain in her belly.  _ “Out,  _ I say!  _ Out!” _

“He soon will be, with you pushing this hard,” Creylen said tartly. “Just be careful not to push so hard you break his skull, my lady, for that will be beyond even my skill to heal.”

Creylen’s hair was the same red-blonde as Joanna’s father’s was, Lannister gold tainted by the Red Widow, and she wondered which of Gerold the Golden’s sons sired this bastard - Tywald or Tion? For stupid Tytos sired no bastards, and Joanna knew all that had been sown by her father’s seed. She hoped it had been Tion, just to spite the Reyne bitch, and knew that Tywin would have approved of such a sentiment.

Would she be able to name this child Tion? Like as not, Kevan and the rest would push for her to name it  _ Tywin,  _ but she did not think she could have borne that, not yet.

That aside, did Creylen think that watered-down Lannister blood would spare him her wrath, if he continued in his impertinence? He would never have dared to speak so to Tywin-

“Get it  _ out!”  _ she roared, all thought of anything but her pain forgotten, and she bore down once more.

 

* * *

 

“Genna,” she croaked, parched and sweating, when finally the pain stopped. “Genna, tell me, tell me true-”

“It’s male,” Genna said, and nothing more. Joanna strained to see, forcing her shaking arms under herself, loathing the weakness that was consuming her whole body.  

“Creylen,” she called. “The child. What of it?”

The maester looked up from the cradle, frowning above his chain and crossed arms, and shrugged.

“It lives, my lady,” he said, “and it is male, as Lady Genna said. Beyond that, I am not certain.”

“Bring it to me,” Joanna said, settling against the pillows her usually useless maids arranged behind her. “Now, Creylen.”

Creylen shrugged again, gathering the tiny, swaddled bundle from the crib. It looked too small, smaller even than the twins had - and everyone knew that twins were always smaller than single babes, after all.

“Oh,” Joanna said, the pain of labour erased by something new, something vicious, as if this child had reached into her gut and torn something vital from her.

How cruel the world was, she thought, looking at the jutting brow, the squashed face, the ugly mouth, that it should first take Tywin away from her, and then make a mock of his legacy like this.

“You are neither a Tion nor a Tywin, little thing,” she said, her voice thick where before it had been scratched thin. “Nor even a Jason or a Gerold, I don’t think.”


	2. Glory

**I.**

 

“It smells,” Tyrion whispered to Jaime, and despite herself, Joanna smiled. “Ought it smell, brother?”

“I suppose it ought,” Jaime whispered back, “given how many people live here, but mayhaps don’t say that to anyone else, Tyrion. They may not like to hear such biting truths from a mouth still with its milk teeth.”

Jaime had slotted into place at the Rock as easily as she could have hoped, chafing at the weight of his title and responsibilities at first, but coming to accept them, however grudgingly, under her guidance. He was a good boy, more or less, arrogant in a way alien to Tywin’s pride and her own vanity, a demon with his beloved sword, and quicker to laugh than anyone save foolish Gerion, but clever, in his way, with a manipulative sort of understanding of how men’s minds worked. 

Tyrion idolised Jaime, as was only right, and was proving himself more useful than she could have dreamed at his birth. Such an ugly little thing then, of no worth, now grown into a slightly larger ugly thing, with a mind as sharp as Joanna’s own, she suspected. He had learned to read younger than Jaime had, younger even than Cersei, and retained knowledge like a maester.

Genna had taken to calling him that,  _ little maester,  _ and he seemed to revel in it just as much as he resented it, for he knew well that she intended on seeing him chained. Jaime had taken it up as well, and that pleased Joanna. It was good that Tyrion become used to such things, such titles, for such was his fate - a young man with a mind so bright and a name so powerful as Tyrion’s could hope to become Grand Maester some day, to sit on the maesters’ secretive conclave. Even short legs could not hinder a clever, wealthy man in the Citadel, Joanna was sure of it.

It pleased her as well that the boys got along so well. Any tie that kept Jaime from Cersei was a tie to be nurtured and celebrated, and she suspected that his closeness with Tyrion would be more effective in keeping him from his sister than his friendship with the Marbrand boy. She had to hope that it would be so, at least. 

“The city has always smelled,” Joanna said, reigning her horse in just a little, to draw level with the boys. Tyrion sat before Jaime, secure in the bend of Jaime’s arm and thrilled to have such a monopoly on Jaime’s attention, and shame scalded in her throat to have birthed a son who at seven could not sit a horse for a long journey alone. “You will become used to it, given time.”

Some sneered at her, for riding ahead of Jaime, but it was sensible to keep him back a little - any attack would meet the head of their party first, and it was best that Jaime not be leading them. She had discussed it in those terms with Kevan, who so objected to her continuing shows of strength, and in other terms altogether with Genna, who objected to her handing over the reins of power to a boy so untested as Jaime at so sensitive a time. 

After all, it was not just for the sake of more varied society than was available at the Rock that Joanna and the boys rode east. 

 

**II.**

 

The Queen was failed even beyond what Joanna had imagined, when she had thought to spare a moment for Rhaella’s sake. 

She had never been a robust woman, slight and delicate in a manner that more recalled portraits of Naerys than of Alysanne. Now, she was worse even than that. Frail.  _ Weak.  _

Loreza had always counselled Joanna to be kind to Rhaella, had always insisted that Rhaella was not born for strife, that she had to be shown gentleness from them, since she had never known it from her husband. Such a thing had been difficult for Joanna, but she had done her best, and knew that even still, after so long apart, Rhaella considered her to be her dearest friend.

“I am so glad to have you with me for this,” Rhaella said in her soft voice, taking Joanna’s hands in her soft fingers, her face half-hidden by the heavy drape of her soft hair and soft red scarf. “How wonderful it will be to see our families bound so close, don’t you think?”

Joanna would have liked to bind her family to Loreza’s as well as to Rhaella’s, and would have done so had Loreza not let slip just how delicate her Elia’s health was when they visited after Tyrion’s birth. He had sought a crown for Cersei, a crown for their grandson, and it was only right that she gain such a thing for him.

And for herself, truth be told. What power she might wield, as the Queen’s mother, as a King’s grandmother! Tywin had always promised her a crown for their heirs, because short of committing treason he could not give her the sort of crown that they both craved, in their darkest hearts.

How she missed him. No other man would ever see that shadowed place within her ribs, which she had shared with Tywin when at last he had proved himself worthy of her trust and affection. It was sometimes lonely to be so strong, but she had little choice when she had Kevan seeking to take her control and Jaime seeking to escape it.

“I am so honoured that you and His Grace the King have seen fit to choose my beloved daughter from all the ladies of the realm-”

“Who else was I to choose, Joanna?” Rhaella whispered, a flash of that rare, rare steel sharpening her smile. “What other woman could I trust not to turn her daughter against me, if I could not trust you?”

If Joanna were in possession of a conscience, it would have stung at that. As it was, she smiled, kissed Rhaella’s cheek, and let the Queen take her arm and lead her inside.

Were they not the very dearest of friends, after all?

 

**III.**

 

“How pleasant to see you, Mother,” Cersei said, dipping the barest hint of a curtsy when Joanna entered the solar that was hers for the duration of their stay. “I was told that you would be arriving today, but not when - I came directly here as soon as I was informed of your arrival.”

Joanna turned Cersei’s face up with a firm finger under her chin, inspecting her from hairline to jawline. She was more beautiful than ever. More beautiful than Joanna had been at her age, even with the drape of the emerald-and-gold scarf pinned into her hair, even with the high collared dress, so fashionable after Rhaella’s preferences. She wore both better than any of the other girls Joanna had spied during her audience with the Queen, which was only right. Mayhap her particular beauty would serve her well, and keep Rhaegar to her bed as Aerys had never kept to Rhaella’s.

Jaime was sitting by the fire, body curved as if leaving room for someone to share his seat, and Joanna let her lip curl, let them know that she  _ knew.  _ How  _ dare  _ they be so stupid as to be perverse  _ here! _ At the cusp of their triumph!

“Leave us, Jaime,” she said, flicking her hand over her shoulder, toward the door. He looked as though he would protest, which enraged her - how  _ dare  _ he! They would never have attempted such  _ stupidity  _ had their father lived! “Immediately.”

“But Mother-”

_ “Go,”  _ she snarled, fury burning under her skin. “I will deal with you when I am finished with your sister.”

He went, tail between his legs and cheeks burning scarlet, and Joanna watched him until the door closed in his wake.

Then, she turned to Cersei.

“What a fool you are,” she said, pleased when Cersei recoiled as though slapped. Good. Let the girl feel every one of these words like a blow. Let her feel the weight of her selfish stupidity.

Joanna was not prone to self-deception, as Tywin had sometimes been. She knew well enough that to lay claim to Tywin as she had had been selfish, because there had been other women, probably, who Tywin might have wed to further the reach and splendour of House Lannister. But she had coveted him, and she had claimed him, and had made him hers.

Cersei, it seemed, sought to unman Jaime in much the same way she had unmanned their father. Joanna would not allow it, not when she was  _ right  _ on the cusp of sealing Jaime’s betrothal to the biddable little Tully girl, who so reminded her of Genna, if Genna had been timid.

“You are to be Queen,” Joanna hissed, so close to Cersei that her features smudged together. “You are to have more power than any woman of this House has ever  _ dreamed,  _ and you would throw it over for a  _ foible??  _ Did you learn  _ nothing _ in your time here?”

“I have learned that the Queen is weak,” Cersei snapped, flouncing away and throwing herself into the chair by the fire, doubtless still warm from Jaime’s backside. “I have learned that if I am to have  _ anything  _ to call my own-”

Joanna slapped Cersei with the back of her hand, as hard as she could, right on the soft meat of her upper arm - not on her face, where it could be seen. 

“You will be  _ Queen,”  _ Joanna said again, so furious as to have gone cold. “You will belong to the realm-”

“As you belonged to the Rock-”

“ _ And the realm will belong to you,”  _ Joanna said, seizing Cersei once more by the chin. “Act as though you deserve that privilege.”

 

**IV.**

 

Tyrion went missing on their second morning in the city, and Joanna felt near to despair. 

He was a clever little thing, and not the aberration she had thought him at first, but he was still her deepest shame - to think that she, so beautiful, and Tywin, so fine a man, could have produced  _ that! _ Her more pious rivals denounced Tyrion as a punishment from the gods themselves, but Joanna knew better. He was a freak of circumstance, mayhap even shaped in her womb by her grief at Tywin’s passing, and to be endured as best she could manage.

And he was missing, which meant he had slipped his guard and his keeper, and was loose in the Red Keep - a disaster, if ever there was one. Tyrion and Cersei had made it well known that they loathed one another, and Joanna dreaded that he would speak ill of his sister in hearing of someone who mattered.

“I’ll fetch him home,” Genna promised her, departing with a kiss on the the apple of Joanna’s cheek. “Strange little creature, he won’t have gone far.”

To Pycelle, mayhap, or to the library in search of new reading on dragons, his dearest love - she liked him little enough, but Joanna knew her son. 

“Go, then,” she said, sighing, and was careful to close the door behind Genna before rounding on Jaime.

“I love her,” he said stubbornly, before she could even open her mouth. “I would fight the prince for her, if the King wouldn’t burn me for it.”

Aerys would laugh to do it, to see Tywin’s legacy so sundered, and for that alone Joanna would destroy this nonsense between the twins. It could not be allowed to continue, even if that meant forcing them to opposite sides of the realm for the rest of her days - surely by then, no embarrassment could come of Jaime being infatuated with Cersei, and Cersei being so enamoured of controlling and claiming Jaime. What selfish fools! How she wished she had maintained her ignorance, as Tywin had!

“I would kill you before you had the chance, and install Tyrion as Lord of the Rock in your place,” she said, pleased by the way he stepped back, eyes wide in shock. Jaime alone of them all seemed to love Tyrion, but even he would balk at allowing Tyrion to inherit their father’s seat and titles.

“He can have it,” Jaime said, in a moment of unexpected bravado. “Or Cersei can break her betrothal, and she and I can wed-”

Jaime she did strike across the face, a whip-crack smack to his cheek that made him shout and stumble, more in shock than anything. She hoped it bruised, so he would have to come up with some stupid story to cover himself. She hoped it bruised, so he might learn something of embarrassment. 

“Your sister will wed Prince Rhaegar, and in the fullness of time, she will be his Queen,” Joanna said. “ _ You,  _ gods willing, will wed Lysa Tully, and sire half a dozen handsome sons on her. You will never touch your sister again, save in public, to offer her your arm or take her for a dance. Am I  _ perfectly  _ clear?”

“You’ve never struck me before,” he said, clutching his face. “Surely if the King could wed his sister-”

“Neither the King nor his sister wished to wed one another, boy,” Joanna said, hardly above a whisper, “and neither you nor your sister wish to emulate them.  _ Am I clear?” _

 

**V.**

 

Later, when Genna was brushing out her hair, Joanna remembered to ask after Tyrion.

“He was with Prince Rhaegar,” Genna said softly, “and was in the middle of extolling Cersei’s virtues, when I found them.”

How close to disaster they had come! Had Tyrion told soft-hearted Prince Rhaegar tales of the sharp edge of Cersei’s tongue, why, Joanna would not be surprised to find that Rhaella’s fool son had decided to throw Cersei over in favour of some more biddable girl with a trace of Valyrian blood. 

That said, it was unlike Tyrion to speak well of Cersei at all, never mind with any sincerity. Doubtless he would seek some reward for not damaging the interests of House Lannister, and she would give it, because monster or not, she would always feel some measure of guilt for consigning a son of Tywin’s to the Citadel.

“He is more intelligent than he has any right in being,” Genna said. “Sometimes, he makes me think of-”

“I’ve warned you before of saying that, goodsister,” Joanna said. Genna flinched when Joanna reached back and caught her by the wrist. “I will not hear it.”

It ached too deeply, to hear Tywin’s brothers and sisters name the dwarf more his likeness than Jaime - and ached all the more, for it was plainly true. Jaime was handsome, had charm and the sort of easy, open-handed charisma that had escaped Tywin even in the heyday of their youth, but he had none of the  _ power _ that had made so impressive a man of his father. He had none of the strength of will, none of the  _ severity _ that had marked Tywin from his youth, that had singled him out from all their peers. 

“I miss him as well, Joanna,” Genna said quietly, pressing a kiss to Joanna’s crown, “but it does not dishonour his memory to acknowledge that he lives on in  _ all  _ of your children, love.”

How Tywin would have loathed Tyrion! How he would have hated the brat for stealing away her ability to carry another child, for being so brutal a birth that her very cunt bore the scars of his entry into the world! How Tywin would have raged at the pious bleating that named Tyrion their punishment from the gods, that named her a whore for having borne such a creature!

It turned her stomach to see so much of Tywin in the very child Tywin would have viewed with so much  _ shame.  _

But more than that - Tywin would never have had such delicacy as to compliment someone he hated as Tyrion did Cersei, not even for such a prize as a crown. In that silver tongue of his, she saw not Tywin, but herself - and she was ashamed of herself for being proud, if only because she saw nothing of herself but her face in the twins.

 

**VI.**

 

“If I may, Mother,” Tyrion said into the leaden silence at their dining table the next morning, “I should like to make a request.”

“Of course you would, child,” Joanna said, patting his little hand. Cersei’s face twisted with jealousy at even that little show of affection, and Joanna fought the urge to roll her eyes. “And I may well grant it, if it lies within your limits.”

Tyrion’s limits were far more restrictive than those imposed on the twins, but they were for his own good, and for the good of House Lannister - Joanna and Genna had coached that into him for as long as he had been able to understand such things. He resented it, of course he did, but he knew the truth of it - his life was intended for the Citadel, so he could serve their House with his brilliant mind without the shame of refused marriage proposals. 

“I should like to learn to ride a real horse,” he said, cheeks flaming bright red. “I spoke with the master of the stables at the Rock, and I read some books about leatherwork, and I think I have a design for a saddle that might enable me to-”

“What a jape,” Cersei cut in, lip curling. “You, ahorse? Bad enough that Jaime allows you a pony-”

“I don’t  _ allow  _ him a pony,” Jaime said, sharper than she might have expected. “He is as entitled to ride as any other boy his age, sister, and it’s best he learn with me beside him, to catch him lest he fall.”

Tyrion’s smile was almost handsome, and Cersei’s scowl marred even her exceptional beauty. 

This was a small gift indeed, though, and a practical one - Tyrion was yet a child, and so would not be able to ride a horse for several years. He already rode his pony with a specially moulded saddle, designed half by their indulgent stablemaster and half by foolish Gerion, who refused to turn his clever mind to more practical matters. It would be a small thing to turn his little saddle into a larger saddle, when the time came.

“When we return to the Rock,” she said, “we will speak to the stablemaster, and see if we cannot find a horse with a temperament to suit you.”

She watched Cersei from the corner of her eye, disappointed by how little of her fury Cersei was hiding. How was she to manage a full court of politicians and lickspittles if she wore her emotions so openly? 

“And you, Cersei?” she said, waving over the boy attending Jaime for more of the tart lemon water Steffon Baratheon had always so loved, which was so refreshing against the sticky humidity of King’s Landing. “What boon would you ask of me, as a celebration of your betrothal?”

“I have no need of horses or trinkets,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I will soon have the whole of the realm, will I not?”

Hmm. Perhaps Joanna’s worries were unnecessary - perhaps Cersei had a better understanding of her coming station than Joanna had given her credit for. Perhaps, after all, she had some of Tywin’s sense, or Joanna’s own.

“Save your  _ boons  _ for those who need them, Mother,” Cersei said, eyes crystal sharp on Tyrion’s suddenly bowed head. “Some of us have not the natural gifts to make anything of ourselves without it being handed to us.”

Jaime, sitting across from Cersei, beside Tyrion, looked uncomfortable, which seemed only right. Jaime had an abundance of natural gifts, Cersei too, but Jaime did not seek to remind Tyrion of their brother’s lack every time he opened his mouth. It showed ill grace on Cersei’s part, an ill grace she would be better served to save for those who  _ deserved  _ her ire - because, for all his faults, for all the disdain she herself held in reserve for him, Tyrion  _ would _ serve House Lannister, and Cersei would need to foster something other than hate in his heart. 

“Tomorrow, sweetling,” Joanna said, delighted by the way all three children froze - she was not a woman given to endearments, and they knew well just how deeply angry she was when she doled them out. “You and I shall have a talk about how a Queen ought to behave - mayhaps I will ask for dearest Rhaella’s aid, and we three shall wile away a pleasant afternoon.”

“There is nothing that wretched old Queen can teach me-”

“She can teach you when to keep your mouth  _ shut,  _ my love,” Joanna said, honey dripping from her words. “Something all who went before you learned before their husbands reached the throne. Something you  _ will  _ learn.”

 

**VII.**

 

“She is wilful, just as you were,” Rhaella said softly, clutching Joanna’s hand in slim, cold fingers. Where before Joanna had disdained her frailty, now it seemed genuinely concerning - the vicious scarring shining silver-pink against her pale arms and neck, the bruising, the  _ burning.  _ Whatever her feelings had been about Rhaella in their youth, it had been  _ their  _ youth, lives shared together while others circled, sniffing for blood and weakness.

How  _ dare _ that mad bastard on the throne do this to her! How dare he inflict such  _ pain _ on someone who had no one to champion her! 

Genna and Kevan had brought her rumours, Gerion tall tales, of nets of alliances being cast from Winterfell to Storm’s End by way of the Eyrie and Riverrun, and she had thought to spin a golden thread between the Rock and Sunspear, to have something more to offer Hoster Tully and his friends when she sought to add Jaime to their web. 

Delicate Elia was in Oldtown now, though, wed to ever-smiling Baelor Hightower, and Jaime all but betrothed to little Lysa Tully even without a powerful alliance to sweeten the promise - and Cersei was set to wed daydreaming Rhaegar, and bind him down where he could not run wild as his father has.

No fine knight in a white cloak had championed Rhaella. Using Hoster Tully and Rickard Stark and Steffon Baratheon’s son as her sword, Joanna would do their duty for them.

 

**VIII.**

 

“When I was your age,” Jaime said to Tyrion, one hand pressed carefully to Tyrion’s back while Tyrion vomited miserably into the bucket a helpful serving girl had provided, “someone tried to poison me, too.”

It had not been long after Tyrion’s birth, while Joanna was still weak and Kevan still ineffectual without orders. She had found her strength the moment Genna had told her what had occurred, and she had found the wretches who had dared harm her son and she’d had them killed.

Slowly. So, so slowly.

Had Tyrion’s face not swollen so abominably, she might have suspected a simple stomach sickness, but the fever and the swelling and the horrible vomiting all pointed at genuine poison, and the anger curling in her gut was mirrored not only on Jaime’s face, but on  _ Cersei’s.  _

“I’ll skin them alive,” she fumed. “How  _ dare _ they try to taint this triumph! How  _ dare  _ they strike against a Lannister of Casterly Rock!”

“Good girl,” Joanna said, pressing her palm to Cersei’s red cheek for just a moment. “Take that rage and  _ forge it, _ and-”

A knock on the door silenced them, but for Tyrion’s heaving, and Joanna nodded to Tyg, standing guard.

When he opened the door, Rhaella was outside, hands tucked into her sleeves and absent a white shadow.

“Usually,” she said, soft voice hoarse and raw, “I do not see my lord husband after dinner unless he has burned a presumed traitor.”

There were scores of scoremarks on Rhaella’s arms, a thick necklace of bruising under her elegantly draped scarf, and a bite so deep on her upper breast that Joanna sent for Pycelle to clean and stitch it.

“I will kill him for this, my friend,” Joanna promised, holding Rhaella’s face in her hands and looking into those pale purple eyes, wondering if she was a coward because she could not do the same to Tyrion. “Will you stand by me?”

She may not have been able to look Tyrion in the eye, but she  _ would  _ see Aerys destroyed for daring to harm him. Before he was an imp, before he was Tywin’s doom and her ruin, he was a  _ Lannister,  _ and no toothless dragon would ever harm a Lannister of Casterly Rock so long as Joanna held the reins of power.

That Aerys took his imagined triumph out on Rhaella’s delicacy only stoked Joanna’s rage higher - if he were truly so fierce and powerful as he presented himself, could he not find a more worthy target? Could he not face down these imagined enemies of his in battle, even if in court rather than on the field?

“I will,” Rhaella said, “and so, I think, will Steffon’s boys.”

 

**IX.**

 

Steffon Baratheon’s sons were as night and day, as different from one another as… Well, as Tywin Lannister’s sons, Joanna had to admit, even if the differences between Robert and Stannis Baratheon were not so readily evident as those between Jaime and Tyrion.

Tyrion, still recovering in Joanna’s bedchamber, near-martyr to their suddenly shared cause, was thrilled by all this rare, positive attention, and clung to an unexpectedly attentive Cersei’s hand whenever she visited him. Joanna hoped that this incident would foster some closeness between them, if only because it would be best for Tyrion to be as loyal to Cersei as he was to Jaime, but she was not naive enough to  _ assume  _ that it would. Still, it saddened her a little to see Tyrion, so clever for his age, to be so desperate for the love Cersei wouldl never truly give him, and for Cersei to be so driven by her desire for Rhaegar’s approval that she set aside even her personal distaste of her brother just to make the prince think of her as gentler and sweeter than she was by nature.

“You are sure the King tried to poison your imp?” Robert Baratheon said, booming even in an undertone, and Cersei sniffed - she rarely called Tyrion by name, but had taken up Jaime’s ire whenever others refused to show Tyrion even a little respect. “How can you be so?”

“Her Grace the Queen is sure,” Joanna said, cool and precise in how she presented her words, “and so, I am sure. I would never doubt her word.”

Quiet in his brother’s shadow, Stannis Baratheon’s brow furrowed. He was a serious boy, a year older than the twins, Joanna thought, and he reminded her a little of Tywin at that age. He was missing Tywin’s focus, Tywin’s ferocity, but such things would not suit a second son, so mayhaps it was not a bad thing.

“The King is opposed to the betrothal between my daughter and his son,” she went on, “but the Queen is not - she has long desired a match be made between our children.”

And between her children and Loreza’s, but Elia’s frailty at a distance was no match for Cersei’s vitality in close quarters. It was a sweet victory, to have won out over Loreza in this.

“What do you need of us, Lady Lannister?” Stannis asked, stepping forward very slightly, and appearing for a moment to be his father’s very image. “We hold no sway over the King, and are not so close to him that we might induce him to confess to any wrongdoing in our company.”

“You  _ are  _ close to others who might help, though,” she said. “To Lord Arryn, to Lord Stark’s children. You could become close to my children, too, as friends. We are worthwhile allies, particularly in uncertain times.”

“You speak of an uprising,” Stannis Baratheon said, his law-loving father come again.

“You speak of an alliance,” Robert Baratheon said, and Joanna thought that there might be something of the Targaryens in this one, who so quickly scented the strength in her offer.

“I speak,” Joanna Lannister said, “of a Great Council.”

 

**X.**

 

Robert Baratheon would wed Lyanna Stark, Brandon Stark would wed Catelyn Tully, Lysa Tully would marry Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister would marry Rhaegar Targaryen.

Great men from across the realm answered Joanna’s summons, written in Jaime’s name, inviting them to a tourney to celebrate Cersei’s betrothal - on the very first day, Hoster Tully and his scattered brother sidled up to her and offered shy little Lysa on a platter, much to her delight, and there were even some hints of interest in Tyrion, which was amusing in its way. On the second day, Rickard Stark offered her belated condolences on Tywin’s passing, even though she received a stiffly formal letter from him not a full month after Tywin’s death. 

On the third day, at the feast, Jon Arryn asked her to dance with him.

They knew, after all - Rhaegar was soft in the head, always mourning and moping, and Cersei would be able to control him if she applied herself. Joanna had always controlled Cersei, even if the girl would deny it wholesale, and she controlled Jaime as surely as a puppeteer. 

Tywin would be proud, if he were here to see her. 

He would be proud of Cersei, too, something that Joanna thought might weigh more heavily on her daughter’s shoulders than it would on Jaime’s. It never failed to amaze her, how little Jaime seemed to care for the legacy that had been entrusted to him.

“Tell me, daughter,” Joanna said as she and Cersei walked arm-in-arm about Rhaella’s carefully tended gardens. “What prize do you seek for your work in securing our victory? What boon would you ask of me?”

“My prize I have already, Mother,” Cersei said, glancing away beyond the tall, fluted lilies, to where Rhaegar hid with his squires and companions. “But a boon, that is something I would have.”

“I thought as much,” Joanna said, pleased that Cersei is cooler now, after these past few months together. “And what would that boon  _ be?” _

Robert Baratheon and the middle Stark boy were laughing together not ten yards from where Jaime was coaxing uncertain smiles from Lysa Tully, and just beyond them, Elia Martell, thin enough to snap clean in two, was showing off her fat, smiling baby son to Rhaella. 

“At this council you have engineered,” Cersei said, leaning close, looking under her lashes as Genna did, as Joanna used in the blush of her youthful splendour. Had Joanna never seen that particular brand of false innocence, she might even have believed it. “You will need other agents besides Aunt Genna and Uncle Kevan.”

“I have the ears of all the most powerful men in the realm,” Joanna said, “and you, my dear, can have the ears of their sons, if you let those sons think they might have your favour.”

Cersei laughed, startled, and stayed close. Her eyes were a darker, brighter green that Tywin’s, but they were just as hungry for Joanna’s approval as her father’s ever were. 

If only Jaime had Cersei’s hunger, or even Tyrion’s thirst. Then, he might have been worthy of Tywin’s legacy.

“And will those fine men speak your words, Mother?” Cersei said, sweet as honey and twice as golden. “Will they report on one another?”

Joanna drew them to a halt, surrounded by Rhaella’s prized roses and the hum of power. 

“This boon you ask of me,” Joanna said, facing Cersei. “Say it plain, sweetling. You are almost as skilled at speaking around your desires as your father was.”

“Your trust, if you have any to spare,” Cersei said, smiling sharp as a razor. “As much trust as you have pity for Tyrion, or disappointment for Jaime.”

Joanna found herself smiling, too, and felt as though she was smiling for the first time since Tywin fell ill, so long ago. 

“What a  _ clever  _ girl you have grown to be, Cersei,” she said. “Mayhap a little trust would not go amiss.”

She had missed having a strong right hand through which to wield her careful influence, after all.


End file.
